Graphical user interfaces provide mechanisms for a software application and related processes operating on a computer system to graphically present information to a user of the computer system. There are numerous conventional techniques that a software application can utilize to generate or construct information to be presented within a graphical user interface. As an example, a software program may be configured with software code that produces data, graphics or other information encoded in one or more pages of a markup language such as the hypertext markup language (HTML). A software program such as a browser may display the HTML pages for presentation of the data, graphics or other information to user on computer display or monitor. As another example, a software application may encode information in extensible markup language (XML) in order to allow this information to be transferred to other software applications for various processing purposes. A software application equipped to utilize XML processing technologies can apply an extensible stylesheet language (XSL) stylesheet or an XSL transformation (XSLT) to process or convert a raw XML data source formatted in one manner into an output format that can be displayed on a graphical user interface. As a specific example, XSLT can perform an XML to HTML transformation so that XML encoded data can be displayed within an HTML compatible interface.
There exist various types of conventional software applications that produce large amounts of information and that require the ability to produce reports or summaries of such information for display to users within a graphical user interface. As an example, network management applications operate on computer systems to manage entities with computer and storage area networks. Such management applications store large amounts of data and often require the ability to generate reports on network management data. As a specific example, data storage system developers have integrated large capacity data storage systems, data communications devices and computer systems into networks called “storage networks” or “storage area networks” (SANs.) A storage area network is a collection of data storage systems that are networked with a number of host computer systems that operate as servers to access data stored in the data storage systems. Elements of a typical conventional storage area network implementation include one or more connectivity devices such as high speed data switches or routers that interconnect the various data storage systems to each other and to one or more host or server computer systems (servers) that require access to (e.g., read and/or write) the data in the data storage systems on behalf of client software applications and/or client computer systems.
A developer or administrator of such a storage area network environment may install and operate one or more distributed storage area network management software applications within the storage area network to manage or administer the various managed entities (i.e., devices, computer systems, data storage systems, etc.) that operate within the storage area network. A network manager or administrator (i.e., a person) responsible for management of the storage area network operates the network management software application to perform management tasks such as performance monitoring, network analysis and remote configuration and administration of the various components operating within the storage area network. A typical conventional storage area network management software application may have several different software components that execute independently of each other on different computer systems but that collectively interoperate together to perform network management. A typical conventional storage area network management application collects vast amounts of management data from the managed entities in the network and stores this data within a managed data repository such a relational database. Using conventional relational database access tools, a user of a conventional storage area network management application can access the relational database in order to produce management reports that visually convey relationships and associations between information stored within the management data relational database.